Alexander Knight sat down at his workstation, logged in, and changed the world.
He was a young man for his position as a full intelligence Analyst of the Central Intelligence Agency, having just graduated from college a few short months ago. He had attended the [REDACTED] Institute on an ROTC scholarship, and expected to be deployed to the sandbox after graduation.
As he took a sip from his 'WORD'S BEST ANALYST' coffee mug, filled with cocoa rather than any caffeinated beverage, he considered how things hadn't exactly gone to plan.
After he graduated from school, he had been approached by the CIA. Apparently it was because of his test scores, as well as something one of his professors had said to a CIA recruiter, but he had been offered the opportunity to transfer out of the Army and into The Company to complete his years of Government Service. It was all rather irregular, but after some soul-searching, he had decided that his country needed a good analyst more than another set of boots on the ground, and he had accepted the offer.
Alexander had been assigned to the Far East division at Langley, meaning that most of his... studies... focused on the Glorious People's Republic of China, which was important, fulfilling work.
However, not all of his attention was focused on the PRC. He had taken Japanese in high school and College, and so he was often sent work related to the Land of the Rising Sun. It was considered low-priority, given that the U.S. and Japan were, after all, allies, and not particularly attractive work, which was probably why he, as the new guy, got it.
That was what he was working on now. As he flicked through intelligence reports gathered by contacts in Japan, something just seemed off to him. Dresden Pharmaceuticals seemed to be the one of the prime sources of his discomfort, and not without good reason.
The report he was looking at now concerned with one of their factories, and a slight imbalance in the quantities of materials they were receiving compared to the amount of drugs they were producing, particularly at their Takayama facility. That, in itself, wouldn't have been worthy of CIA attention, but there were a million little other things that made the company suspicious, many of which Alexander had noticed.
Profits that were higher than sales indicated they should be. Greater employment than production, research, and development would require. R&D projects that didn't seem to go anywhere. Given that the company sold drugs in the United States, this was a matter of some concern.
Alex reviewed a few new pieces of information on Dresden and tagged them with his analysis, then kicked them up the ladder. There was very little new in the Dresden folder; it was not his main concern today. He opened the next file he had been instructed to look at. Various reports of 'magic' used throughout a certain region of Japan, but nowhere else.
This was the real deal. This was why Alexander had taken this job. Looking at the inexplicable and incomprehensible actions of other nations and dissecting them, breaking them down into their component pieces, and discovering the logic behind them. Figuring out what made people and nations tick.
And besides this 'magic' thing was very interesting.
He tagged the reports, sorted them according to detail and reliability, and kicked them up to the next level. This had come to his desk because they were, for whatever reason, more detailed and reliable than the usual UFO sightings.
And if there was a possibility than any government had harnessed something like magic, the U.S. Government had to know. Something like that could have a massively destabilizing influence, even starting another word war.
One word had come up frequently in Japanese government communications in relation to these reports. Vingulf. Whatever it meant, Alexander was desperate to find out.
Break
Center on the target and pull the trigger. Alexander thought, drawing a bead on the distant target and pulling the trigger. The gun leapt in his hands and discharged with a rush of smoke and a loud bang.
Alexander fired again three more times, thinking over what he had seen in the reports he had read. He had dug deeper into the reports of 'magic', and found that there was indeed something strange going on. Cases of fires with no cause discovered, strange deaths, and so forth. It was amazing what you could discover when you pieced together just unclassified police reports.
Something is definitely going on here, Alex thought, as he fired another shot. There had been one particularly unusual case where a fast food restaurant had been declared a biohazard site, closed to the public, and cordoned off. However, the satellite images, gained by an observation satellite maneuvering to search an area of Africa, told a different story. It appeared from the satellite shots that the joint had been blown up and possibly set on fire, and no biohazard response was evident from the images.
After that, Alexander had pulled literally everything he could on the region in a crusade to find a logical explanation for the event, and several others like it. Hours of frustrated research later, Alex was no closer to finding an answer. At that point, he decided to go down to the shooting range to let off some steam.
If magic is real... he thought, firing again, then... what? What does that mean?
Another person stepped up to the shooting space next to him and raised a handgun. She fired several shots in quick succession, then paused for a moment. Alex fired another shot, then lowered his gun and turned to look at her.
"Hey!" He said, shouting so she could hear him through her hearing protection, "Anna! What have you been working on?"
She removed her hearing protection and turned toward him. "Alexander. How have you been?"
"Pretty good." Alexander said, looking over the young woman standing in front of him. She was tall, with long blonde hair tied up in a high ponytail. Her face was soft, but with the ghost of a severe expression touching her features. In all, she was a rather attractive woman, but she gave off a certain... aura that made her seem rather distant. "I've been working on some Japan stuff. How about you?"
"Far East." Anna said. "China. True Korea. The usual. Nothing to significant."
"I know what you mean." Alexander said. "I've been working on magic."
Anna rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me they restated that goat program again."
"Nothing like that. Some weird stuff has been happening in Japan, and I've been looking into it."
"Come on." Anna said. "Magic? Are you serious? I'm sure there's a perfectly plausible explanation for all of this," she waved her hand, "whatever it is you're talking about."
"I feel like that too," Alex said, "but some of the stuff I've seen on file is pretty weird. And it's all concentrated in the past month, in one region."
"So maybe the Japanese government is trying to cover something." Anna muttered. "I know that sounds more plausible to me."
"Yeah, but what would they be trying to cover up?" Alexander said.
BREAK
"So we appear to have a problem here." Dominic Winters, Director of Intelligence, said, lightly placing his fist on the conference table. "I've looked through the reports Knight has assembled, and they are quite convincing."
"So you're convinced that we have a Japanese magic problem?" The Director of Support said, looking at Winters skeptically. "Seems like that was a little easy."
"I've been looking at this problem for some time." Winters said. "And the evidence has convinced me. One of my people has been on this case for a while, and-"
"Your 'Boy Wonder'?" The Director of Science and Technology said.
"Yes, what of it?" Winters muttered. "He's better than half of the idiots we employ already, and that's with just six months on the job."
"How is this relevant?" The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Martin Griffin, said.
"I just wanted to clear that up." Science and Technology said.
"Let's stay on topic." Griffin said, shuffling his printouts of Alexander's reports on the topic at hand. "So, about this magic concern?"
Winters stood up and cleared his throat. "Gentlemen, for the past month or so, we have been gathering a number of reports of incidents involving the usage of 'magic' in the [REDACTED] region of Japan. Normally this would go in the same folder as the aliens and UFO sightings, but Knight has apparently convinced several members of my staff that there's more to it than that..."
"Convinced you how?" The Director of the National Clandestine Service said. "It would take a lot to convince me that the Japs have come up with some kind of-"
Winters pressed a button next to his desk, and a projector mounted on the ceiling flickered to life. A slideshow image appeared on the far wall, displaying a compilation of the most compelling evidence Alexander had gathered thus far. All of the various directors present took a moment to look it over.
"Well, I'm convinced." National Clandestine Service said. "Not that this is magic, but there is definitely some weird-ass shit going on here. What do you want to do about it?"
"I'll need your people." Winters said to NCS. "But really, I'll need the whole Company. SOCOM, too."
"What you're talking about would require congressional approval." The Director of Support said. "If we want to get the military involved, that means-"
"You let me worry about congress." Griffin said. "What we need to do here is analyze this threat, if it is one, and determine a course of action."
"In that case, I wholeheartedly support Intelligence's plan." NCS said, smiling. "And not just because I'm a SOCOM fanboy."
"But what, exactly, would Intelligence's plan entail?" Support said. "I, for one, am not convinced that calling SOCOM is the right move. For one thing, we don't even know enough about this threat to have a hard target for them."
"Thank you, Support," Winters said, pressing his button again, flicking to a slide labeled, quite eloquently, 'THE PLAN'. "We intend to deploy a mixture of HUMINT assets and our own paramilitary units to the [REDACTED] region of Japan order to determine the nature of the threat and identify hard targets for SOCOM."
"I'm a bit concerned about all this, to be honest." Public Affairs said. "I know none of you people ever have to clean up your own messes, but that's, to be blunt, in the Third World, not one of our staunchest allies. People aren't too comfortable with the idea that commandos might come busting down their doors one day."
"We would be fully prepared to disavow the teams in the event of discovery." Winters declared, pointing at a bullet on the slide. "They would not be deployed with any incriminating evidence, and they would be armed entirely with weapons purchased off of African battlefields. No chance of those being traced back to the U.S."
Public Affairs turned green. "You're going to arm them? I thought Japan was crazy about gun control, and-"
"They'll have to be discrete," Winters said, neatly cutting off Public Affairs. "But I'm not prepared to send my agents into a situation with this many unknowns unarmed. That's just asking for trouble, even more than sending them in armed is."
"What, exactly, if anything, are we prepared to tell the public about this?" The Inspector General said. "This seems important, and I'm willing to approve whatever you people think is necessary. However, what do we tell the American public about this?"
Winters sighed. "Optimal? Nothing. Anything we put out to the public will be all over the internet in minutes, and therefore we alert whoever it is we're going after as to what is happening, which is bad. In the more likely event of having to release something, we plant our agents, then tell the public what we're doing, forgetting to mention that our people are already in place. That way, at least we avoid ceding the initiative to the enemy."
"Fine," Public Information said. "But I'm still skeptical that you can pull this off without telling anyone, particularly if you need SOCOM."
"We have a plan." Winters said. "And God willing, our luck will actually hold for once. Now, this is the basic idea behind what we're going to do..."
Winters spent the next half hour going over the specific details of the plan his department had concocted. There were disagreements about the personnel allocations, and of course the potential cost of the operation was an issue. However, as more and more of the evidence was revealed to the assembly, the directors were convinced, one by one, of the necessity of the mission. Not that any of them would admit to believing that it was really magic they were going after, of course, but still...
"By the way," National Clandestine Service said, after Winters reviewed a slide containing the proposed usage of Special Forces in the mission. "Are we sure that General Ochoa will go along with this? He may not like all the cloak-and-dagger bullshit involved."
"He'll tolerate it." The Director said. "He's worked with us in the past, and he's tolerated the cloak-and-dagger then, and he will do it again. Plus, he'll love the opportunity to do something like this. I think he's always wanted the opportunity to see something magical, and he won't mind hiding it from the public, if we can get the authorization to move ahead.
"Fair enough." NCS said, putting his hand on his chin. "But who do we use for this mission?"
"I have people in mind." Winters said, smiling. "We'll probably have to send in Knight, if for no other reason than to have his expertise on-site. I'm working on hand-picking people from our paramilitary department to escort his team, and will have a genuine field operative there to train him before the mission and stop them from standing out."
"So before we put this to a vote," The Inspector General said, standing up, "I want to know why we're doing this. I mean, what are our stated reasons going to be, and why are we really doing this."
"Why we say we are doing this is simple." Winters said, pressing his button and advancing his slideshow as the Inspector General sat down. "We have several American Citizens who have vanished in this region of Japan, and we say that we are looking to get them back."
"Missing AmCits?" NCS exclaimed, bolting to his feet. "Why didn't you mention this earlier? This puts a completely new spin on this situation."
"Because it's hardly relevant to the mission." Winters said smoothly. "The most recent of the disappearances was more than eight years ago, and the rest were all more than ten. There is no chance of finding these people on this mission, though we could produce some evidence saying that there might be. However, it's a very convenient cover story."
"Still, my question stands." The Inspector General said. "Why are we really doing this? Violating the sovereignty of an ally is not something to do lightly."
"We're doing this because there are too many unknowns." Winters said. "And it is our duty to the American people to know. And with a situation like this, who knows? The whole world may be at stake."
"Fine." The Inspector General said. "This has gone on long enough. Let's put it to a vote. All in favor of proceeding with this operation, raise your hands."
One by one, all the directors, save Public Affairs, raised their hands. The Director nodded.
Public Affairs looked around the table and shook his head. "I'm man enough to know when I'm beat." He said. "And I'll go along with this. But I just want to go on the record as saying I thought this was a bad idea."
"Fair enough." The Director said. "Then shall we proceed with this Operation... Blazing Summer?"
Break
As the rest of the directors filed out of the conference room, the Griffin beckoned Winters over to him.
"What is it, Martin?" Winters said, walking over to the Director.
"You've kicked up quite a storm, Dominic." The Director said, shaking his head. "I don't think I've even seen an operation come together out of nothing like this quite so quickly."
"Well... truth be told, I've been planning this for quite some time." Winters said. "I don't even know if Knight is aware of it, but his reports are causing quite a stir."
"I'm aware of that." Griffin said. "I am simply remarking that it is impressive how quickly we have come to an agreement on a course of action. Remarkable, no?"
"Yes, though what I find remarkable about it is the evidence that Knight has managed to string together." Winters said. "It's a bizarre proposition, make no mistake, but..."
"We don't lose anything by investigating." Griffin said.
"If we handle this situation properly." Winters said, eyes narrowing. "There is considerable risk if we handle it improperly."
"Which we won't." Griffin said.
Break
"So that, in a nutshell, is what I've been looking at over the past few months." Anna said, folding her arms.
"Really. So the Chinese have been quiet lately, huh," Alex muttered.
The pair were still standing outside the shooting range, where they had been talking for the past few minutes. They had returned their guns, and stepped outside to talk, and their conversation had quickly turned to matters of work."
"So, how about you?" Anna said.
"This and that." Alex said, "I've had a lot of stuff about Japan come across my desk, and there's some weird stuff going on if the reports are to be believed."
"What do you mean?" Anna asked, tilting her head forward.
"Uptick in strange injuries, property damage, road closings, and, oddly enough, biohazard warnings."
"That could be part of a cover-up."
"Yes, which is what I think. We've got some satellite images that corroborate the idea that the Japanese may be trying to cover something up, which is about the closest thing I have to evidence of anything going on. The rest is all in trends, anomalies, things like that."
"And what have you told the bosses?"
"I've flagged everything that looks suspicious and passed it up, along with a few reports on the oddities. I don't know what they're doing about it, but-"
The doors to the lounge outside the shooting range opened, and two well-muscled men in suits entered. "Hello," the man on the right said. "We are here to talk to Alexander Knight. Miss Patton, if we may borrow him for the moment?"
"Sure." Anna said, "Fine by me."
"Um, what do you want?" Alexander said.
"If you'll come with us, we'll explain." The speaker said, his facial expression unchanged.
"Fine." Alex said. He hadn't gotten into the Agency by being unaware of when he was being ordered to do something.
"Thank you." The man said, turning around.
Alexander walked out of the room with the two men flanking him. He wondered what in the world the upper management, the only ones who could have sent for him like this, would want with him.
The two men led him out down one of the long, ubiquitous, hallways in the Langley Headquarters. They walked him to a staircase, and up several levels, then out and down another hallway.
Eventually, uncomfortable with the silence, Alex chose to speak. "Where are we going?" He asked, looking toward the stony-faced guard who had spoken earlier.
The man said nothing for a moment, then; "You're going to Mr. Winter's office. Apparently, you're to be briefed for a mission."
Alex was taken aback at his words. A mission? Does that mean field work? He thought, considering the possibilities. The most likely location for field work was the Middle East, but that didn't make any sense. He was specialized in the Far East, and there were people much more qualified than him for any sort of field work.
The trio rounded a corner and came to a short hallway with, with a single door at one end. "We're here." One of the burly men said. "Good luck."
Alex stepped forward gingerly, not sure what the correct procedure for this sort of situation was. He paused in front of the door for a moment, then decided to simply open it and walk in. It wasn't as if his boss wasn't expecting him.
As Alexander stepped inside, the first thing he noticed was how ordinary the room looked. For a man most of the public would recognize as a spymaster, the room was surprisingly plain. Standard-issue furniture, tacky government-issue decorations, and a desk covered in printouts. Behind it, a man sat leaning back in a swivel chair. He was surprisingly short, with close-cropped brown hair and nondescript features.
He was, perhaps, the most obvious spy ever.
"Umm, hello, sir." Alex said, falling into parade rest out of old habits. "I was told you wanted to speak to me?"
"Ah, yes, Alexander Knight." The man, Dominic Winters, said. "You've been causing quite a stir, did you know that?"
"No, sir." Alex responded.
"Well, the reports you've turned in over the past month have been disconcerting, to say the very least." Winters shuffled some paper on his desk, then picked one up. "Like this one. 'A Report on the Possibility of Preternatural Activity in the Far Eastern Theater'. A rather bland title for such an influential paper."
Alex shook his head. "What do you mean, sir? That's just an analysis of the evidence I was assigned, exactly as requested. It crossed my mind that it might be a joke, sir, but-"
"Is this a joke? Because we're about to act based on this report, and if it's a load of-"
"It's no joke, sir." Alex said. "That's exactly what the evidence implies."
"Good. Because we're planning a significant operation around this report, and I want to be sure we're on the same page."
"Yes, sir."
"So, you think the Japanese have discovered magic, and they're trying to keep it hidden?"
"No, sir, that's simply based on the rumors. I do, however, think they're trying to conceal something."
"Good. Because we're sending you in to figure out what's happening."
Alexander paled. This was confirmation. "Sir, I had hardly the best choice for something like this. I am not trained for-"
"Not so cavalier now that it's your skin on the line, huh?" Winters said. "Don't worry, you'll be fine. We're just sending you in to work on any data our field teams may collect. You'll never be in any real danger."
"That's not it, sir. I'm just not sure what... why aren't we doing this through official channels? Why risk a covert operation on the soil of one of our allies?"
"Because of your report, kid. Is something is going on, it's being covered up, and nobody covers up something on this scale without the involvement of the local government. So we're just going to go in on the down-low and have a look around, ok?"
Winters ruffled through his papers again, then pulled out a folder labeled 'OPERATION BLAZING SUMMER-ALEXANDER KNIGHT.'
"Here you go." He said, handing the folder to Alex, "Read through that when you have the chance, by which I mean right after this meeting."
"So, you said that I'll be analyzing intelligence." Alex said slowly, "But what part will I be playing in this operation?"
"Exactly that. You, and a small team will be deployed to the region that seems to be the center of all of this, and serve as a nerve center for the teams on the ground that will be gathering information on events in the region, as well as conducting limited intelligence gathering activities."
"I understand, sir." Alex said, processing the information he had been given. He was deploying to a foreign nation in order to conduct espionage activities. It was... something. Very something. He had rather mixed feelings about the whole affair. It was strange, having the whole agency jumping at one of his reports.
"Good. You took Japanese in high school and college and have completed our fluency exam, so no problems there." Winters said. "We'll have someone there the mentor you on field work, but your job won't entail any of that."
"That you, sir." Alex said.
Break
Nathan Hunter sulked through the jungle, carrying pack on his shoulder, rifle in hand. He had been in this miserable hellhole for days now, even since he had been dropped off in the jungle on his mission.
He climbed a small ridge, brushing aside leaves and vines as he walked forward. He reached down to his belt, grabbed his bottle and took a sip of water. His clothing was drenched in sweat, and he had to drink constantly to maintain his body. He couldn't carry all the water he needed with him, either, so he had been forced to collect, filter, and purify some from a stream. He hoped that he had done it properly, or he would suffer a long, lingering death from some jungle parasite.
No pressure.
As he reached the top of the ridge, he slunk past a black-and-red striped, possibly lethal, snake, and assumed his position at the top of the ridge. He was at the very edge of a large, artificial clearing in the jungle, where, if his information was correct, a small brush plane would soon be landing. There was a short runway in the clearing consisting mostly of compacted dirt, with a few ramshackle buildings next to it.
Nathan was a tall man, with short black hair, currently glossy with ambient moisture. He had several scars on his face from various incidents over the years, and a slight twist to his nose that reconstructive surgery hadn't quite managed to correct.
At present, his reason for sulking in the jungle had to do with a certain arms dealer, one who had been determined as getting too friendly with various terrorist groups. Now, as he visited on of his clients in Africa, Nathan had been deployed by the Agency to eliminate him in a way that could be blamed on his local rivals.
Nathan opened the scope on his sniper rifle and took aim at the distant landing strip, resting his rifle on a convenient fallen log. Then, slowly, he began to dial in to the local conditions. Wind was low, thank God, humidity was high, and temperature was high. He adjusted his sight for the conditions at hand and prepared to make the shot. Then he waited.
And waited some more.
After long while, a distant buzz became audible over the sounds of the jungle. It grew in volume as its source moved towards Nathan, and he went over his preparations again and took a deep breath.
The brush plane came into sight, flying low across the jungle. As it came in for a landing, Nathan flexed the arm holding his rifle. He was ready.
The plane circled once, then came in for a landing. Several figures walked out of the buildings next to the runway and approached the plane. Nathan raised his scope to his eyes and played it over the landed plane. Several people disembarked from the aircraft. Nathan looked over each of them in turn. Given the plane's specs and the distance it had traveled, it couldn't carry that many people, so one of these had to be his target.
No... No... No... There he was. The last one to disembark the plane, the arms dealer. He was staying in the shadow of the aircraft, trying to make himself a hard target for snipers.
Unfortunately for him, he was up against one of the best.
Nathan lined up his shot and took a deep breath. Then he heard something. A steady, rhythmic thumping sound. A helicopter.
Who the hell is this? Nathan thought. Had the deal gone bad in big way? Who the hell would send a helicopter all the way out here?
Nathan another deep breath, then took the shot. He rocked back, absorbing the recoil from the powerful rifle, which discharged with a suppressed cough.
Before the sound from the rifle discharging could reach him, the arms dealer crumpled, detail obscured by the extreme range. The helicopter was getting closer. Nathan stood up and turned around and prepared to flee into the jungle.
Then the miniguns opened up. It wasn't so much a rapid series of bangs as it was a continuous whir, the sound of four thousand explosions a minute in rapid succession. The fire from the heavy guns went on for a moment, then cut out. There was silence for a moment, then it was shattered by three gunshots.
Nathan sighed. Curiosity killed the cat, but he was an inquisitive creature. Slowly, he turned around and made his way to the very edge of the jungle.
A massive assault carrier descended into the jungle, barrels of its wing-mounted miniguns slowly rotating as it descended toward the floor of the clearing.
The brush plane was barley in one piece. It was covered in bullet holes and resting on one wing. Ruined bodies lay scattered around the runway, lying in pools of their own blood.
The helicopter slowly descended toward the floor of the jungle, making contact just as the barrels of its miniguns stopped spinning. The side door opened as it touched down, and a man dressed in a business suit stepped out of the aircraft. Nathan was taken aback as he looked. It was Deputy Director Hammond.
"Mr. Hunter!" He shouted, "Good work on your mission, but the situation has changed. It's time to come home!"
Nathan appeared out of the jungle and began walking toward the Deputy Director. If something had happened that forced him to come all the way out to the middle of nowhere, it was serious business indeed.
"What is it?" Nathan asked as he with the man.
"Nathan." He responded, "have we got a job for you!"